This very short piece (about 250 words) was just published by Souvenir. They’re a lovely journal. Here ’tis.
http://www.souvenirlit.com/n-west-moss
“The Hatching”
Published by N. West Moss, author
FLESH & BLOOD: Reflections on Infertility, Family, and Creating a Bountiful Life (October 12, 2021, from Algonquin) My work has appeared in The New York Times, Brevity, River Teeth, Salon, The Saturday Evening Post, and elsewhere. My short story collection, The Subway Stops at Bryant Park was published by Leapfrog (2017). I am a fellow at MacDowell, VCCA, and Cill Rialig. My work has won the Saturday Evening Post's Great American Fiction Contest, 3 Faulkner-Wisdom gold medals (for essay, short story, and memoir), as well as the The Diana Woods Creative nonfiction award. My work has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize View more posts
N. West Moss 
Great West….I can just smell those cedar shavings and Mom’s Chanel. Quite evocative piece…..kudos Love….Brad
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Brad – you’ll appreciate this, I think. Mom was wearing her black and white Marimekko mini dresses and one of her snazzy wigs. Remember those? And her perfume was Secret of Venus. Nice to have siblings to share these memories with.
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Your story reminded me of how every Spring JP and I would check on the baby geese at Blueberry Pond. As you may recall we made a sacrifice of our back yard lawn so that the geese could have a place to rear their young. It was always a special elation to see them with their goslings and always a real heart break on days when we saw the count diminished by overnight predators.
We were especially happy to see Henry and Elvira and they seemed to take special pride in bringing their broods by on parade to show them off. As you may recall Elvira was named after our Filipino maid. Elvira broke her neck and could not raise it up so JP nursed her by hand and would sit with her in his lap on the porch. Henry, named after my older brother, was the dominant goose, but for some reason took up with Elvira after everyone (except JP) shunned her. He was also the goose that would fly up to the kitchen window to spy on us when when JP was cooking.
Henry also took up sharing day time naps with our Yorkshire terrier, Alban. Alban and he would of course have a lengthy “butt battle” in the dog bed we put outside. Each bumped each others butt to gain favorable advantage in the bed until they both either bored of the effort or managed to find a resolution to their summer time ministration and then settled down to a nap in the warm summer afternoon.
The latest owners have placed a fence around the edge of Blueberry Pond so they will unfortunately not be able to see the Spring time dance of the geese and their goslings. I guess that is the price of having a really nice back yard.
Thanks for your story.
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Steve – what an amazing array of stories. I remember much of it, including JP throwing out bread for the ducks every day. So dear, and messy, and wonderful. I did not know that the dog had to fight for the dog bed. I think YOU have some writing to do. This is the seed of an amazing memoir, in my humble opinion
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Lovely, West. Perhaps, the lesson, too, is that we can’t close the door against the night.
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